Offered Without Comment 13

Reblogged from here, also offered without comment.

Guilt by Participation

Guy McPherson used to say in his presentations that we’re all born into bondage, meaning that there is no escape from Western civilization and its imperatives, including especially participation in the money economy. The oblique reference to chattel slavery is clumsy, perhaps, but the point is nonetheless clear. For all but a very few, civilization functions like Tolkien’s One Ring, bringing everyone ineluctably under its dominion. Enlightenment cheerleaders celebrate that circumstance and the undisputed material and technological (same thing, really) bounties of the industrial age, but Counter-Enlightenment thinkers recognize reasons for profound discontent. Having blogged at intervals about the emerging Counter-Enlightenment and what’s missing from modern technocratic society, my gnawing guilt by virtue of forced participation in the planet-killing enterprise of industrial civilization is growing intolerable. Skipping past the conclusion drawn by many doomers that collapse and ecocide due to unrestrained human consumption of resources (and the waste stream that follows) have already launched a mass extinction that will extirpate most species (including large mammals such as humans), let me focus instead on gross dysfunction occurring at levels falling more readily within human control.

An Empire of War

Long overdue U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan has already yielded Taliban resurgence, which was a foregone conclusion at whatever point U.S. troops left (and before them, Soviets). After all, the Taliban lives there and had only to wait. Distasteful and inhumane as it may be to Westerners, a powerful faction (religious fanatics) truly wants to live under a 7th-century style of patriarchy. Considering how long the U.S. occupied the country, a new generation of wannabe patriarchs came to adulthood — an unbroken intergenerational descent. Of course, the U.S. (and others) keeps arming them. Indeed, I heard that the U.S. military is considering bombing raids to destroy the war machines left behind as positions were so swiftly abandoned. Oops, too late! This is the handiest example how failed U.S. military escapades extending over decades net nothing of value to anyone besides weapons and ordnance manufacturers and miserable careerists within various government branches and agencies. The costs (e.g., money, lives, honor, sanity) are incalculable and spread with each country where the American Empire engages. Indeed, the military-industrial complex chooses intervention and war over peace at nearly every opportunity (though careful not to poke them bears too hard). And although the American public’s inability to affect policy (unlike the Vietnam War era) doesn’t equate with participation, the notion that it’s a government of the people deposits some of the blame on our heads anyway. My frustration is that nothing is learned and the same war crimes mistakes keep being committed by maniacs who ought to know better.

Crony and Vulture Capitalism

Critics of capitalism are being proven correct far more often than are apologists and earnest capitalists. The two subcategories I most deplore are crony capitalism and vulture capitalism, both of which typically accrue to the benefit of those in no real need of financial assistance. Crony capitalism is deeply embedded within our political system and tilts the economic playing field heavily in favor of those willing to both pay for and grant favors rather than let markets sort themselves out. Vulture capitalism extracts value out of dead hosts vulnerable resource pools by attacking and often killing them off (e.g., Microsoft, Walmart, Amazon), or more charitably, absorbing them to create monopolies, often by hostile takeover at steep discounts. Distressed mortgage holders forced into short sales, default, and eviction is the contemporary example. Rationalizing predatory behavior as competition is deployed regularly.

Other historical economic systems had similarly skewed hierarchies, but none have reached quite the same heartless, absurd levels of inequality as late-stage capitalism. Pointing to competing systems and the rising tide that lifts all boats misdirects people to make ahistorical comparisons. Human psychology normally restricts one’s points of comparison to contemporaries in the same country/region. Under such narrow comparison, the rank injustice of hundred-billionaires (or even simply billionaires) existing at the same time as giant populations of political/economic/climate refugees and the unhoused (the new, glossy euphemism for homelessness) demonstrates the soul-forfeiting callousness of the top quintile and/or 1% — an ancient lesson never learned. Indeed, aspirational nonsense repackages suffering and sells it back to the underclass, which as a matter of definition will always exist but need not have to live as though on an entirely different planet from Richistan.

Human Development

Though I’ve never been a big fan of behaviorism, the idea that a hypercomplex stew of influences, inputs, and stimuli leads to better or worse individual human development, especially in critical childhood years but also throughout life, is pretty undeniable. As individuals aggregate into societies, the health and wellbeing of a given society is linked to the health and wellbeing of those very individuals who are understood metaphorically as the masses. Behaviorism would aim to optimize conditions (as if such a thing were possible), but because American institutions and social systems have been so completely subordinated to capitalism and its distortions, society has stumbled and fumbled from one brand of dysfunction to another, barely staying ahead of revolution or civil war (except that one time …). Indeed, as the decades have worn on from, say, the 1950s (a nearly idyllic postwar reset that looms large in the memories of today’s patrician octogenarians), it’s difficult to imaging how conditions could have deteriorated any worse other than a third world war.

Look no further than the U.S. educational system, both K–12 and higher ed. As with other institutions, education has had its peaks and valleys. However, the crazy, snowballing race to the bottom witnessed in the last few decades is utterly astounding. Stick a pin in it: it’s done. Obviously, some individuals manage to get educated (some doing quite well, even) despite the minefield that must be navigated, but the exception does not prove the rule. Countries that value quality education (e.g., Finland, China, Singapore, Japan, South Korea) in deed, not just in empty words trotted out predictably by every presidential campaign, routinely trounce decidedly middling results in the U.S. and reveal that dysfunctional U.S. political systems and agencies (Federal, state, municipal) just can’t get the job done properly anymore. (Exceptions are always tony suburbs populated by high-earning and -achieving parents who create opportunities and unimpeded pathways for their kids.) Indeed, the giant babysitting project that morphs into underclass school-to-prison and school-to-military service (cannon fodder) pipelines are what education has actually become for many. The opportunity cost of failing to invest in education (or by proxy, American youth) is already having follow-on effects. The low-information voter is not a fiction, and it extends to every American institution that requires clarity to see through the fog machine operated by the mainstream media.

As an armchair social critic, I often struggle to reconcile how history unfolds without a plan, and similarly, how society self-organizes without a plan. Social engineering gets a bad rap for reasons: it doesn’t work (small exceptions exist) and subverts the rights and freedoms of individuals. However, the rank failure to achieve progress (in human terms, not technological terms) does not suggest stasis. By many measures, the conditions in which we live are cratering. For instance, Dr. Gabor Maté discusses the relationship of stress to addiction in a startling interview at Democracy Now! Just how bad is it for most people?

… it never used to be that children grew up in a stressed nuclear family. That wasn’t the normal basis for child development. The normal basis for child development has always been the clan, the tribe, the community, the neighborhood, the extended family. Essentially, post-industrial capitalism has completely destroyed those conditions. People no longer live in communities which are still connected to one another. People don’t work where they live. They don’t shop where they live. The kids don’t go to school, necessarily, where they live. The parents are away most of the day. For the first time in history, children are not spending most of their time around the nurturing adults in their lives. And they’re spending their lives away from the nurturing adults, which is what they need for healthy brain development.

Does that not sound like self-hobbling? A similar argument can be made about human estrangement from the natural world, considering how rural-to-urban migration (largely completed in the U.S. but accelerating in the developing world) has rendered many Americans flatly unable to cope with, say, bugs and dirt and labor (or indeed most any discomfort). Instead, we’ve trapped ourselves within a society that is, as a result of its organizing principles, slowly grinding down everyone and everything. How can any of us (at least those of us without independent wealth) choose not to participate in this wretched concatenation? Nope, we’re all guilty.

Scrub-a-Dub

“Language is dynamic” is a phrase invoked in praise or derision of shifts in usage. Corollaries include “the only constant is change” and “time’s arrow points in only one direction” — both signalling that stasis is an invalid and ultimately futile conservative value. The flip side might well be the myth of progress, understood in reference not to technological advancement but human nature’s failure to rise above its base (animal) origins. This failure is especially grotesque considering that humans currently albeit temporarily live in an age of material abundance that would provide amply for everyone if that largesse were justly and equitably produced and distributed. However, resources (including labor) are being systematically exploited, diverted, and hoarded by a small, unethical elite (what some call “alpha chimps”) who often use state power to subjugate vulnerable populations to funnel further tribute to the already obscenely wealthy top of the socioeconomic hierarchy. But that’s a different diatribe.

Although I’m sensitive the dynamism of language — especially terms for broad ideas in need of short, snappy neologisms — I’m resistant to adopting most new coin. For instance, multiple colors of pill (red, blue, white, and black to my knowledge) refer to certain narrative complexes that people, in effect, swallow. Similarly, the “blue church” is used to refer to legacy media struggling desperately (and failing) to retain its last shreds of legitimacy and authority. (Dignity is long gone.) Does language really need these terms or are hipsters just being clever? That question probably lacks a definitive answer.

My real interest with this blog post, however, is how the modern digital mediascape has given rise to a curious phenomenon associated with cancel culture: deletion of tweets and social media posts to scrub one’s past of impropriety as though the tweet or post never happened. (I’ve never deleted a post nor have any plans to.) Silicon Valley hegemons can’t resist getting their piece of the action, too, by applying deeply flawed algorithms to everyone’s content to demonetize, restrict, and/or remove (i.e., censor) offensive opinion that runs counter to (shifting) consensus narratives decided upon in their sole discretion as water carriers for officialdom. Algorithmic dragnets are not effective kludges precisely because thoughts are not synonymous with their online expression; one merely points to the other. Used to be said that the Internet is forever, so wait before posting or tweeting a reasonable duration so that irresponsible behavior (opinion and trolling, mostly) can be tempered. Who knows who possesses technical expertise and access to tweet and video archives other than, say, the Wayback Machine? When a public figure says or does something dumb, a search-and-destroy mission is often launched to resurrect offending and damning past utterance. Of course, scrub-a-dub erasure or deletion is merely another attempt to manage narrative and isn’t a plea for forgiveness, which doesn’t exist in the public sphere anyway except for rehabilitated monsters such as past U.S. presidents a/k/a war criminals. And the Internet isn’t in fact forever; ask an archivist.

Shifting language, shifting records, shifting sentiment, shifting intellectual history are all aspects of culture that develop naturally and inevitably over time. We no longer believe, for instance, in the four elements or geocentrism (a/k/a the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic system; never mind the intransigent Flat Earthers who need not be silenced). Darker aspects of these shifts, however, include the remarkable Orwellian insight that “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past” from the 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Here’s the passage for context:

Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present, controls the past … The mutability of the past is the central tenet of Ingsoc. Past events, it is argued, have no objective existence, but survive only in written records and in human memories. The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records, and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it.

In 2021, the awful lesson is taken to heart by multiple parties (not the Party in the novel but wannabes) who have latched maniacally onto Orwellian mechanisms of thought control specifically through the manipulation of records, history, and language. But as mentioned above, policing mere expression is not the same as policing thought itself, at least among those who retain critical thinking skills and independence of mind. I abstain judgment how effective attempted brainwashing is with the masses but will at least mention that Yeonmi Park, who escaped from North Korea in 2007 before settling in the U.S. in 2014, describes the chilling totalitarian thought control exercised by the North Korean government — the stuff of nightmare dystopianism. The template is by now well established and despots everywhere are only too happy to implement it repeatedly, following an evil trajectory that should be resisted at every turn while still possible.

Individual vs. Society, pt. 3

Among those building fame and influence via podcasting on YouTube is Michael Malice. Malice is a journalist (for what organization?) and the author of several books, so he has better preparation and content than many who (like me) offer only loose opinion. He latest book (no link) is The Anarchist Handbook (2021), which appears to be a collection of essays (written by others, curated by Malice) arguing in theoretical support of anarchism (not to be confused with chaos). I say theoretical because, as a hypersocial species of animal, humans never live in significant numbers without forming tribes and societies for the mutual benefit of their members. Malice has been making the rounds discussing his book and is undoubtedly an interesting fellow with well rehearsed arguments. Relatedly, he argues in favor of objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand that has been roundly criticized and dismissed yet continues to be attractive especially to purportedly self-made men and women (especially duped celebrities) of significant wealth and achievement.

Thus far in life, I’ve disdained reading Rand or getting too well acquainted with arguments in favor of anarchism and/or objectivism. As an armchair social critic, my bias skews toward understanding how things work (i.e., Nassim Taleb’s power laws) in actuality rather than in some crackpot theory. As I understand it, the basic argument put forward to support any variety of radical individualism is that everyone working in his or her own rational self-interest, unencumbered by the mores and restrictions of polite society, leads to the greatest (potential?) happiness and prosperity. Self-interest is not equivalent to selfishness, but even if it were, the theorized result would still be better than any alternative. A similar argument is made with respect to economics, known as the invisible hand. In both, hidden forces (often digital or natural algorithms), left alone to perform their work, enhance conditions over time. Natural selection is one such hidden force now better understood as a component of evolutionary theory. (The term theory when used in connection with evolution is an anachronism and misnomer, as the former theory has been scientifically substantiated as a power law.) One could argue as well that human society is a self-organizing entity (disastrously so upon even casual inspection) and that, because of the structure of modernity, we are all situated within a thoroughly social context. Accordingly, the notion that one can or should go it alone is a delusion because it’s flatly impossible to escape the social surround, even in aboriginal cultures, unless one is totally isolated from other humans in what little remains of the wilderness. Of course, those few hardy individuals who retreat into isolation typically bring with them the skills, training, tools, and artifacts of society. A better example might be feral children, lost in the wilderness at an early age and deprived of human society but often taken in by a nonhuman animal (and thus socialized differently).

My preferred metaphor when someone insists on total freedom and isolation away from the maddening crowd is traffic — usually automobile traffic but foot traffic as well. Both are examples of aggregate flow arising out of individual activity, like drops of rain forming into streams, rivers, and floods. When stuck in automobile congestion or jostling for position in foot traffic, it’s worthwhile to remember that you are the traffic, a useful example of synecdoche. Those who buck the flow, cut the line, or drive along the shoulder — often just to be stuck again a little farther ahead — are essentially practicing anarchists or me-firsters, whom the rest of us simply regard as assholes. Cultures differ with respect to the orderliness of queuing, but even in those places where flow is irregular and unpredictable, a high level of coordination (lost on many American drivers who can’t figger a roundabout a/k/a traffic circle) is nonetheless evident.

As I understand it, Malice equates cooperation with tyranny because people defer to competence, which leads to hierarchy, which results in power differentials, which transforms into tyranny (petty or profound). (Sorry, can’t locate the precise formulation.) Obvious benefits (e.g., self-preservation) arising out of mutual coordination (aggregation) such as in traffic flows are obfuscated by theory distilled into nicely constructed quotes. Here’s the interesting thing: Malice has lived in Brooklyn most of his life and doesn’t know how to drive! Negotiating foot traffic has a far lower threshold for serious harm than driving. He reports that relocation to Austin, TX, is imminent, and with it, the purchase of a vehicle. My suspicion is that to stay out of harm’s way, Malice will learn quickly to obey tyrannical traffic laws, cooperate with other drivers, and perhaps even resent the growing number of dangerous assholes disrupting orderly flow like the rest of us — at least until he develops enough skill and confidence to become one of those assholes. The lesson not yet learned from Malice’s overactive theoretical perspective is that in a crowded, potentially dangerous world, others must be taken into account. Repetition of this kindergarten lesson throughout human activity may not be the most pleasant thing for bullies and assholes to accept, but refusing to do so makes one a sociopath.

Individual vs. Society, pt. 2

Coming back to this topic after some time (pt. 1 here). My intention was to expand upon demands for compliance, and unsurprisingly, relevant tidbits continuously pop up in the news. The dystopia American society is building for itself doesn’t disappoint — not that anyone is hoping for such a development (one would guess). It’s merely that certain influential elements of society reliably move toward consolidation of power and credulous citizens predictably forfeit their freedom and autonomy with little or no hesitation. The two main examples to discuss are Black Lives Matter (BLM) and the response to to the global pandemic, which have occurred simultaneously but are not particularly related.

The BLM movement began in summer 2013 but boiled over in summer 2020 on the heels of the George Floyd killing, with protests spilling over into straightforward looting, mayhem, and lawlessness. That fit of high emotional pique found many protester accosting random strangers in public and demanding a raised fist in support of the movement, which was always ideologically disorganized but became irrational and power-hungry as Wokedom discovered its ability to submit others to its will. In response, many businesses erected what I’ve heard called don’t-hurt-me walls in apparent support of BLM and celebration of black culture so that windows would not be smashed and stores ransacked. Roving protests in numerous cities demanded shows of support, though with what exactly was never clear, from anyone encountered. Ultimately, protests morphed into a sort of protection racket, and agitators learned to enjoy making others acquiesce to arbitrary demands. Many schools and corporations now conduct mandatory training to, among other things, identify unconscious bias, which has the distinct aroma of original sin that can never be assuaged or forgiven. It’s entirely understandable that many individuals, under considerable pressure to conform as moral panic seized the country, play along to keep the peace or keep their jobs. Backlash is building, of course.

The much larger example affecting everyone, nationwide and globally, is the response to the pandemic. Although quarantines have been used in the past to limit regional outbreaks of infectious disease, the global lockdown of business and travel was something entirely new. Despite of lack of evidence of efficacy, the precautionary principle prevailed and nearly everyone was forced into home sequestration and later, after an embarrassingly stupid scandal (in the U.S.), made to don masks when venturing out in public. As waves of viral infection and death rolled across the globe, political leaders learned to enjoy making citizens acquiesce to capricious and often contradictory demands. Like BLM, a loose consensus emerged about the “correct” way to handle the needs of the moment, but the science and demographics of the virus produced widely variant interpretations of such correctness. A truly coordinated national response in the U.S. never coalesced, and hindsight has judged the whole morass a fundamentally botched job of maintaining public health in most countries.

But political leaders weren’t done demanding compliance. Any entirely novel vaccine protocol was rushed into production after emergency use authorization was obtained and indemnification (against what?) was granted to the pharma companies that developed competing vaccines. Whether this historical moment will turn out to be something akin to the thalidomide scandal remains to be seen, but at the very least, the citizenry is being driven heavily toward participation in a global medical experiment. Some states even offer million-dollar lotteries to incentivize individuals to comply and take the jab. Open discussion of risks associated with the new vaccines has been largely off limits, and a two-tier society is already emerging: the vaccinated and the unclean (which is ironic, since many of the unclean have never been sick).

Worse yet (and like the don’t-hurt-me walls), many organizations are adopting as-yet-unproven protocols and requiring vaccination for participants in their activities (e.g., schools, sports, concerts) or simply to keep one’s job. The mask mandate was a tolerable discomfort (though not without many principled refusals), but forcing others to be crash test dummies experimental test subjects is well beyond the pale. Considering how the narrative continues to evolve and transform, thoughtful individuals trying to evaluate competing truth claims for themselves are unable to get clear, authoritative answers. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine a situation where authorities in politics, medicine, science, and journalism could worked so assiduously to undermine their own credibility. Predictably, heads (or boards of directors) of many organizations are learning to enjoy the newly discovered power to transform their organizations into petty fiefdoms and demand compliance from individuals — usually under the claim of public safety (“for the children” being unavailable this time). Considering how little efficacy has yet been truly demonstrated with any of the various regimes erected to contain or stall the pandemic, the notion that precautions undertaken have been worth giving injudicious authority to people up and down various power hierarchies to compel individuals remains just that: a notion.

Tyrants and bullies never seem to tire of watching others do the submission dance. In the next round, be ready to hop on one leg and/or bark like a dog when someone flexes on you. Land of the free and home of the brave no longer.

Addendum

The CDC just announced an emergency meeting to be held (virtually) June 18 to investigate reports (800+ via the Vaccination Adverse Effect Reporting System (VAERS), which almost no one had heard of only a month ago) of heart inflammation in adolescents following vaccination against the covid virus. Significant underreporting is anticipated following the circular logic that since authorities declared the vaccines safe prematurely (without standard scientific evidence to support such a statement), the effects cannot be due to the vaccine. What will be the effect of over 140 million people having been assured that vaccination is entirely safe, taken the jab, and then discovered “wait! maybe not so much ….” Will the complete erosion of trust in what we’re instructed told by officialdom and its mouthpieces in journalism spark widespread, organized, grassroots defiance once the bedrock truth is laid bare? Should it?

Individual vs. Society, pt. 1

Having grown up in an ostensibly free, open society animated by liberal Western ideology, it’s fair to say in hindsight that I internalized a variety of assumptions (and illusions) regarding the role of the individual vis-à-vis society. The operative word here is ostensibly owing to the fact that society has always restricted pure expressions of individuality to some degree through socialization and pressure to conform, so freedom has always been constrained. That was one of the takeaways from my reading (long ago in high school) of Albert Camus’ novel The Stranger (1942) (British: The Outsider; French: L’Étranger), namely, that no matter how free one might believe oneself to be, if one refuses (radically, absurdly) to play by society’s rules and expectations, one will be destroyed. The basic, irresolvable conflict is also present in the concerto principle in classical music, which presents the soloist in dialogue with or in antithesis to the ensemble. Perhaps no work exemplifies this better than the 2nd movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Concerto No. 4 for piano and orchestra. A similar dialogue if found in the third movement of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, though dialogue there might be better understood as man vs. nature. The significant point of similarity is not the musical style or themes but how the individual/man is ultimately subdued or absorbed by society/nature.

Aside: A broader examination of narrative conflict would include four traditional categories: (1) man vs. man, (2) man vs. nature, (3) man vs. self, and (4) man vs. society. Updated versions, often offered as tips for aspiring writers, sometimes include breakout conflicts (i.e., subcategories): (1) person vs. fate/god, (2) person vs. self, (3) person vs. person, (4) person vs. society, (5) person vs. nature, (6) person vs. supernatural, and (7) person vs. technology. Note that modern sensibilities demand use of person instead of man.

My reason for bringing up such disparate cultural artifacts is to provide context. Relying on my appreciation of the Zeitgeist, liberal Western ideology is undergoing a radical rethinking, with Woke activists in particular pretending to emancipate oppressed people when flattening of society is probably the hidden objective. Thus, Wokesters are not really freeing anyone, and flattening mechanisms are pulling people down, not building people up. On top of that, they are targeting the wrong oppressors. If leveling is meant to occur along various markers of identity (race, sexual and gender orientation, religion, political affiliation, nationality, etc.), the true conflict in the modern era has always been socioeconomic, i.e., the ownership class against all others. Sure, differences along identitarian lines have been used to oppress, but oppressors are merely using a surface characteristic to distract from their excessive power. The dispossessed oddly fail to recognize their true enemies, projecting animus instead on those with whom grievances are shared. Similarly, Wokesters are busy exploiting their newfound (albeit momentary) power to question the accepted paradigm and force RightThink on others. Yet traditional power holders are not especially threatened by squabbles among the oppressed masses. Moreover, it’s not quite accurate to say that the identitarian left is rethinking the established order. Whatever is happening is arguably occurring at a deeper, irrational level than any thoughtful, principled, political action meant to benefit a confluence of interest groups (not unlike the impossible-to-sort confluence of identities everyone has).

Although I haven’t read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States (1980), I gather that Zinn believed history should not be told from the winners’ perspective (i.e., that of the ownership and ruling classes, significant overlap acknowledged), or from top down, but instead through the lens of the masses (i.e., the people, a large segment of whom are oppressed and/or dispossessed), or from the bottom up. This reorientation applies not only within a given society or political entity but among nations. (Any guess which countries are the worst oppressors at the moment? Would be a long list.) Moreover, counter to the standard or accepted histories most of us learn, preparation of the U.S. Constitution and indeed quite a lot of U.S. history are deeply corrupt and oppressive by design. It should be obvious that the state (or nation, if one prefers), with its insistence on personal property and personal freedom (though only for a narrow class of landed gentry back in the day, plutocrats and corporatists today), systematically rolled over everyone else — none so egregiously as Native Americans, African slaves, and immigrants. Many early institutions in U.S. political history were in fact created as bulwarks against various forms of popular resistance, notably slave revolts. Thus, tensions and conflicts that might be mistakenly chalked up as man vs. society can be better characterized as man vs. the state, with the state having been erected specifically to preserve prerogatives of the ownership class.

More to come in part 2 and beyond.

Fake It Til You Make It

I have observed various instances of magical thinking in mainstream culture, especially here, which I find problematical. Although it’s not my ambition to disabuse anyone of magical thinking, which extends far beyond, say, religious thought, I was somewhat taken aback at the suggestion found in the comic at this link (not embedded). For those not familiar with Questionable Content (one of two online comics I read regularly), the comic presents an extended cast of characters, mostly in their early 20s, living in a contemporary New England college town. Those characters are supplemented by a few older parents and lots of AIs (in robot bodies). The AIs are not particularly futuristic but are simply accepted as a normal (if curious) part of the world of the comic. Major story arcs involve characters and AIs (the AIs are characters, I suppose) in the process of discovering and establishing themselves as they (the humans, anyway) transition into early adulthood. There are no great political themes or intrusions into life in a college town. Rather, the comic is largely about acceptance of difference. Often, that means washing away meaningful difference in the name of banal tolerance. Real existential struggle is almost entirely absent.

In the linked comic, a new character comes along and offers advice to an established character struggling with sexual attractions and orientation. The dialogue includes this exchange:

Character A: If tarot or astrology or religion halps you make sense of the world and your place in it, then why not use them?
Character B: But they’re not real. [emphasis in original]
Character A: It doesn’t matter, if you use them constructively!

There it is in a nutshell: believe whatever you want if it, um, halps. I’ve always felt that being wrong (i.e., using unreal or make-believe things) was a sufficient injunction against anchoring oneself to notions widely known to be false. Besides, isn’t it often remarked that the biggest fool is one who fools himself? (Fiction as a combination of entertainment and building a worldview is quite normative, but it’s understood as fiction, or to a lesser degree, as life imitating art and its inverse. Exceptions abound, which are regarded as psychopathy.) The instruction in that dialogue (part object lesson, part lesson in cognition) is not that it’s OK to make mistakes but that knowingly believing something false has worthwhile advantages.

Surveying examples where promulgating false beliefs have constructive and destructive effects is too large a project. Well short of that, nasty categories include fraud, gaslighting, and propaganda, which are criminal in many cases and ought to be in most others (looking at you, MSM! — or not, since I neither trust nor watch). One familiar benevolent category is expressed in the phrase fake it til you make it, often recommended to overcome a lack of confidence. Of course, a swindle is also known as a confidence game (or by its diminutive, a con), so beware overconfidence when asked by another to pay for something (e.g., tarot or astrology readings), take risks, or accept an ideology without question.

As philosophy, willful adoption of falsity for its supposed benefits is half-baked. Though impossible to quantify, my suspicion is that instances of positive outcomes are overbalanced by negative ones. Maybe living in a constructed reality or self-reinforcing fantasy is what people want. The comic discussed is certainly in line with that approach. However, while we dither and delude ourselves with happy, aspirational stories based on silliness, the actual world around us, including all the human institutions that used to serve us but no longer do, falls to tatters. Is it better going through life and eventually to one’s grave refusing to see that reality? Should childlike wonder and innocence be retained in spite of what is easily observable just by poking one’s head up and dismissing comforting lies? Decide for yourself.

Let’s Be Evil, pt. 1

Evil exists in the world. History and current events both bear this out amply. Pseudo-philosophers might argue that, like emotions and other immaterial sensations, good and evil are merely reified concepts, meaning they are human constructs with no palpable external reality. Go tell that to victims of evildoers. Human suffering can’t be anonymized, rationalized, or philosophized away quite so handily.

It was sort of refreshing, back in the day, when Google’s motto and/or corporate code of conduct was simple: “Don’t Be Evil.” It acknowledged the potential for being or becoming evil (like any of the Bigs: Big Tobacco, Big Soda, Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Media, Big Agriculture, etc.) and presumably aspired to resist obvious temptations. That was then (from 2000 to 2018), this is now (2021 until death take us — soon enough, I fear). But like all entities possessed of absurd levels of wealth and power, Google (now reorganized as a subsidiary of Alphabet, but who actually refers to it that way?) and its Silicon Valley brethren have succumbed to temptation and become straight-up evil.

One might charitably assess this development as something unbidden, unanticipated, and unexpected, but that’s no excuse, really. I certainly don’t envy celebrity executives experiencing difficulty resulting from having created unmanageable behemoths loosed on both public and polity unable to recognize beastly fangs until already clamped on their necks. As often occurs, dystopian extrapolations are explored in fiction, sometimes satirically. The dénouement of the HBO show Silicon Valley depicts tech mogul wannabes succeeding in creating an AI (or merely a sophisticated algorithm? doesn’t matter …) that would in time become far too powerful in blind execution of its inner imperative. In the show, characters recognize what they had done and kill their own project rather than allow it to destroy the world. In reality, multiple developers of computer tech platforms (and their embedded dynamic, including the wildly unhelpful albeit accurate term algorithm) lacked the foresight to anticipate awful downstream effects of their brainchildren. Yet now that those effects are manifesting recognizably, these corporations continue to operate and wreak havoc.

Silicon Valley shows a extended software development period of bungling ineptitude punctuated by brilliant though momentary breakthroughs. Characters are smart, flawed people laughably unable to get out of the way of their own success. The pièce de résistance was yoking one so-called “learning machine” to another and initiating what would become a runaway doomsday process (either like ecological collapse, building slowly the making the biosphere uninhabitable all at once, or like the gray goo problem, progressively “processing” biomass at the molecular level until all that remains is lifeless goo). It was a final act of bumbling that demanded the characters’ principled, ethical response before the window of opportunity closed. Real Silicon Valley tech platforms are in the (ongoing) process of rending the social fabric, which is no laughing matter. The issue du jour surrounds free speech and its inverse censorship. More broadly, real Silicon Valley succeeded in gaming human psychology for profit in at least two aspects (could be more as yet unrecognized): (1) mining behavioral data as an exploitable resource, and (2) delivering inexhaustible streams of extremely divisive content (not its own) to drive persistent engagement with its platforms. Yoked together, they operate to drive society mad, and yet, mounting evidence of this development has not produced even an inkling that maybe the damned doomsday devices ought to be shut off. As with the environment, we operate with freedom enough to destroy ourselves. Instead, politicians issue stunningly ineffectual calls for regulation or break-up of monopolies. In the meantime, ever more absurd wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of a few executives who have clearly punted and decided “let’s be evil.” No restraints on their behavioral experimentation across whole societies exist.

Much more to say on this topic in additional parts to come.

Citizenship in the Community

Something in an online discussion brought me back to my days as a Boy Scout. (No, not that, with your nasty, nasty assumptions.) It was one of the first merit badges I earned: Citizenship in the Community (link to PDF). I can’t remember any of the content anymore (haven’t yet consulted the PDF), and indeed, looking back with the advantage of several decades of hindsight, I have a hard time imagining any of the (morality? ethics?) lessons learned back then having had much durable impact despite remembering an emerging confidence and awareness (a commonplace delusion of youth) of my position within the community. Still, I appreciate having had many Boy Scout character-building experiences, which led to simple and enduring understandings of ideals such as honor, duty, preparedness, service, forbearance, shouldering hardships, and perhaps most of all, accepting responsibility for others, particularly those younger and weaker. (I’m not claiming to be any sort of paragon of virtue. Cynicism and misanthropy may have wrecked that aspiration.) I never served in the military, but I surmise others learn similar lessons slightly later in life when more readily absorbed and not so easily forgotten. In the past decade plus, some may seek these lessons through participation in endurance sports or martial arts (if not distorted by bad instruction like in Cobra Kai), though the focus outward (i.e., toward community and mutual reliance) may not be as strong.

The subject came up in a discussion of participants in small-scale democracy, something I’ve always known is messy, unrewarding, thankless, and sometimes costly yet still necessary to be a good citizen contributing to one’s community. Many adults get their first taste of local democratic groups (read: self-governing) through parent groups like the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA). Or maybe it’s a performing arts organization, home owner’s association, church council, social work hotline, self-help group, or cooperative. Doesn’t matter which. (Political activism and organizing might be something quite different. Hard to say.) Groups run on the good will and dedication of volunteered time and skills for the benefit of members of the community. As with any population, there are always free riders: those who contribute nothing but enjoy and/or extract benefits. In fact, if everyone were integrally involved, organizational complexity would become unmanageable. If activities of such groups seem like a piece of cake or vaguely utopian, just join one and see how different character types behave. Lotta dead wood in such organization. Moreover, power mongers and self-aggrandizers often take over small-scale democracies and run them like private fiefdoms. Or difficult policy and finance discussions divide otherwise like-minded groups into antagonists. As I said, it’s a decidedly messy undertaking.

Members of the community outside of the executive group (typically a board of directors) also have legitimate interests. Maybe community members attend meetings to keep informed or weigh in online with unconstructive complaints and criticisms (or even mockery and trolling) but then refuse to contribute anything worthwhile. Indeed, boards often have difficulty recruiting new officers or participants because no one wants to take on responsibility and face potential criticism directed at them. I’ve also seen boards settle into the same few folks year after year whose opinions and leadership grow stale and calcifies.

Writ large, leadership skills learned through citizenship in the community rise to the equivalents of Boy Scout merit badges Citizenship in the Nation and Citizenship in the World (no links but searchable). Skills deployed at those strata would arguably require even greater wherewithal and wisdom, with stakes potentially being much higher. Regrettably, having just passed through an election cycle and change of leadership in the U.S., my dour assessment is that leadership has failed miserably at multiple issues. The two most significant involve how we fail to organize society for the benefit of all, namely, economic equality and resource sustainability. Once market forces came to bear on social organization and corporate entities grew too large to be rooted in community service anymore, greed and corruption destroyed high-minded ideals. More self-aggrandizers and careerists than ever (no names, fill in the blanks, they’re all famous — or infamous) rose to the tops of organizations and administrations, especially politics, news media, and the punditry. Their logical antidotes are routinely and ruthlessly disenfranchised and/or ignored. The lasting results are financial inequality run amok and unsustainable resource addictions (energy mostly) that are toxifying the environment and reducing the landscape to ruin and inhabitability. (Perpetual war is a third institutional failure that could be halted almost immediately if moral clarity were somehow to appear.) It’s all out there, plain to see, yet continues to mount because of execrable leadership. Some argue it’s really a problem with human nature, a kind of original stain on our souls that can never be erased and so should be forgiven or at least understood (and rationalized away) within a large context. I’m not yet ready to excuse national and world leaders. Their culpability is criminal.

Feeding the Frenzy (redux)

Black Friday has over the past decades become the default kickoff of annual consumer madness associated with the holiday season and its gift-giving tradition. Due to the pandemic, this year has been considerably muted in comparison to other years — at least in terms of crowds. Shopping has apparently moved online fairly aggressively, which is an entirely understandable result of everyone being locked down and socially distanced. (Lack of disposable income ought to be a factor, too, but American consumers have shown remarkable willingness to take on substantial debt when able in support of mere lifestyle.) Nevertheless, my inbox has been deluged over the past week with incessant Black Friday and Cyber Monday advertising. Predictably, retailers continue feeding the frenzy.

Uncharacteristically, perhaps, this state of affairs is not the source of outrage on my part. I recognize that we live in a consumerist, capitalist society that will persist in buying and selling activities even in the face of increasing hardship. I’m also cynical enough to expect retailers (and the manufacturers they support, even if those manufacturers are Chinese) to stoke consumer desire through advertising, promotions, and discount sales. It’s simply what they do. Why stop now? Thus far, I’ve seen no rationalizations or other arguments excusing how it’s a little ghoulish to be profiting while so many are clearly suffering and facing individual and household fiscal cliffs. Instead, we rather blandly accept that the public needs to be served no less by mass market retailers than by, say, grocery and utility services. Failure by the private sector to maintain functioning supply lines (including nonessentials, I suppose) during a crisis would look too much like the appalling mismanagement of the same crisis by local, state, and federal governments. Is it ironic that centralized bureaucracies reveal themselves as incompetent at the very same time they consolidate power? Or more cynically, isn’t it outrageous that they barely even try anymore to address the true needs of the public?

One of the questions I’ve posed unrhetorically is this: when will it finally become undeniably clear that instead of being geared to growth we should instead be managing contraction? I don’t know the precise timing, but the issue will be forced on us sooner or later as a result of radically diminishing return (compared to a century ago, say) on investment (ROI) in the energy sector. In short, we will be pulled back down to earth from the perilous heights we scaled as resources needed to keep industrial civilization creaking along become ever more difficult to obtain. (Maybe we’ll have to start using the term unobtainium from the Avatar movies.) Physical resources are impossible to counterfeit at scale, unlike the bogus enormous increase in the fiat money supply via debt creation. If/when hyperinflation makes us all multimillionaires because everything is grossly overvalued, the absurd paradox of being cash rich yet resource poor ought to wake up some folks.